Because Quitting's Just Not Her Thing
by DARWIN51
Summary: Juliet has always been strong; but everyone has limits. Her story of a massive tragedy; pain, friendship, family, and recovery. Shules, Lassiet friendship, you will see many more characters appear in this story too. Gore warning for first chapter.


(This started as one of my "Imagine Psych"s but it never got posted because I couldn't stop writing.) **Warning: There is a bit of gore in this chapter, but likely only for this chapter. If you would like, skip the paragraph starting with "Lassiter sat close to her" and you will be fine. If there is more for other chapters I will warn you. **

Imagine Lassiter and Juliet are on assignment at an abandoned car factory (picture the one from A Very Juliet Episode) Shawn and Gus are there, too, of course. They are on a mission to rescue a 6-year-old boy and a 9-month-old baby who had been taken hostage, only after the kidnapper realized he had no choice.

Anyways, Lassiter has a stand-off with the kidnapper while Juliet quickly rushes the children out of the room. Lassiter ends up shooting the man when he takes a shot at Juliet (who was wearing a bulletproof vest, aside from the fact that he missed) and the four of them meet up with Shawn and Gus in the main room of the factory, trying to figure a way out.

Lassiter spots a shortcut: a belt-type machine that creates a flat platform across the center of the factory, (two belts that meet in the middle, intended for flattening junk car parts between them (if its not realistic, whatever it doesn't have to make sense)) Seeing no way around it, Shawn goes up and across it first to make sure it was safe. After that, Juliet and the little boy climb up, then Lassiter hands the baby up to her and she begins to cross the belt. Gus then follows. Shawn, being the idiot that he sometimes is, looks for a light switch so they aren't completely in the dark, in sort of a "what does this switch do?" They say curiosity killed the cat, or in this case, curiosity almost killed Juliet.

Shawn flips a switch, which happens to turn on the belt Juliet, Gus, and the child were standing on. Now, don't worry, Juliet was nowhere near the crevice where the two belts meet. But the little boy was. In a split-second motion, she hands the baby off into Gus's unexpecting hands and runs toward the boy, accelerated by the motion of the belt beneath her feet. She grabs the boy, just a footstep over the side of where the belts meet.

She throws him to the side just as she loses her footing, and her left shoe gets caught in it, and eventually pulled down into it.

Over Juliet's ear splitting scream, Lassiter is shouting for Shawn to turn it off, but it won't turn off. Lassiter takes a shot at the control panel from across the factory, and is able to shut down the machine.

Not quite in time though.

Fueled by absolute rage for Spencer and pure horror and fear for his partner, Lassiter quickly hops straight over the step ladder, up and onto the belt, and is at her side in seconds. Juliet's screaming has subsided to small cries between coughs, while Gus has to turn the other way, partly to gather the kids, and partly to avoid throwing up. Shawn rushes to help, but Lassiter quickly barks for him to call 911.

Juliet's lower left leg has completely disappeared between the belts, up to about 7 inches below her knee. There is no blood, although her leg is turning deep purple.

Lassiter is right by her side, not quite sure what to do other than calm her down, rubbing her back, and gently patting her back when she coughed. To his absolute horror, one of the coughs brought with it a good line of blood, which she spat and then coughed some more. Lassiter pictured a toothpaste tube being flattened from the bottom, so what was there had to come out someplace, right?

Shawn called that an ambulance was close and on its way.

Backup arrived before the ambulance, and they took the kids to safety, taking one look at Juliet, whom everyone in the department saw as a little sister, and feeling sick to their stomachs.

Shawn and Gus found a way underneath the belt to see where the car parts came out the other side, flattened.

Neither of them would ever speak about what they saw there, and Guster did throw up. Multiple times, and every time he thought about it thereafter.

It only got worse from there.

When the medics arrived, it only took a minute for them to decide they had to amputate. More bad news came from the paramedic who went to get the supplies from the ambulance: they were out of local and general anesthetic. They had used it all on a previous trip, and hadn't gotten it refilled. Which is illegal, and Lassiter did NOT let them forget that. The best they could do was give her a few aspirin pills.

Pressured by time, they knew they would have to amputate anyway. The best they could do was tie off her leg just below the knee, and recommend she have someone to hold her hand.

Lassiter sat close to her so she was practically leaning into him, squeezing her hand right back while they made the first incision. She was amazingly stoic through that part, with only slight stifling sobs while the built up pressure of the blood gushed everywhere. When she heard one of the medics ask for the "bone saw", she buried her face deep in Lassiter's jacket as he slowly rubbed her back, "shh"ing softly. When they turned on the saw, the high-pitched whirring sound was sickening enough, but when it made contact with her bone, it turned into an ear-splitting extremely high pitched, sickening sound, like drilling a tooth. There was only a two second delay between the start of that sound, and it quickly being drowned out by Juliet's gut-wrenching scream. Her back arched but she fought to keep her face in Lassiter's jacket, unknowingly raking her fingernails down the exposed part of his chest, just above his shirt, actually drawing blood. Lassiter didn't care, in fact he hardly even noticed as he just stared off in the distance, numbly muttering comforting words to Juliet.

By the time they were finished, Juliet was just shaking ever so slightly in Lassiter's arms. Lassiter didn't even have the effort to glare at the paramedics for doing this to his partner. When they asked if she was still awake, he looked down at her in his arms, then back up to the medics and nodded a solemn yes.

"They usually don't stay awake this long. She must be pretty tough." One of the medics commented.

At this point, Lassiter didn't want to hear any shit from them, Juliet in his arms was the only thing keeping him from pulling his Glock on both of them right now. Instead he just said quietly "Yeah. Yes she is."

By the time they loaded her into the ambulance, she was finally unconscious.

When the medics told him he couldn't ride in the ambulance with her, he just growled "I'd like to see you try and stop me."

~/~


End file.
